Fiction
The Ways the Woods May Answer
by Jennifer Mace in Issue Eighteen, November 2024
They would not bury her in consecrated ground. Her life was all the wrong forms of holy.
She walked barefoot through Beltane fields and knew all the herbs of the deep woods; her hands were the first touch infants knew in life, and those who had only the cold press on the eyelids of corpses, the swipe of water over supplicant brows, were jealous of that bloody strength.
No matter. Your beloved did not belong below stone or ringed by paltry yew.
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You plant the seed in a distant clearing among bracken and fallen... Continue →
The Rooms Behind the Kitchen
by Christi Nogle in Issue Eighteen, November 2024
It began at least six months before her end, though of course Rose-Ellen didn't know to frame it in such terms at that time. A little nudge out of her body and to the side, subtle at the start as such dire things often are. She searched for her symptoms and received imperfect terms. Depersonalization, she googled, derealization. Her sensations both were and weren't as described. She was pretty sure it was something else, sharing some features with these known phenomena but ultimately something more.
She cleared her browser history, imagining someone taking those... Continue →
Music, Murder, Murmuration
by Courtney Floyd in Issue Eighteen, November 2024
Ever since her sisters kicked her out of the family band, Cyrene had been searching for someone she could harmonize with. The problem was her auditions had a nasty habit of turning into massacres. Figurative, sure. But also, inevitably, literal.
There was the Americana group out in Asheville—they'd been promising until they'd fizzed out like Cheerwine shaken hard and fast before Cyrene even got to the chorus. And just like that bright red soda pop, their contents stained the carpets. And the walls. And Cyrene, when she tried to revive them.
Then, there was the... Continue →
Desperate Ark Wives
by Somto Ihezue in Issue Eighteen, November 2024
The Book of Genesis
Chapter 7: And They Were Witches.
1Two by two... of the clean animals and the unclean, of the birds, and of everything that crawls, male and female, they all came to Noah, into the ark, just as God had commanded. 2Then the rains poured down. And the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and floodgates of the skies were flung open.
3Noah, a steadfast and faithful servant of God, manned the ark and oversaw the boarding of all creatures great and small. 4Noah and his sons:... Continue →
A Eulogy for Patience
by Chloe Smith in Issue Eighteen, November 2024
5198 words
"This can't be what you want," the oldest and most powerful suitor says. His mouth is stained red. He wipes it with the back of his hand, jerks his head towards the chaos that breaks across the room, the shouts and wild gestures, the spilled wine and half-eaten food.
"They will beggar you with this waste. Is this a proper legacy for your husband's riches?" His words are soft, but his grin curves like a scorpion's tail.
I refuse to look. I keep my spine stiff and tilt my chin down to stare into the leaping flames in the... Continue →
The Poison You Leave
by Krystle Yanagihara in Issue Seventeen, September 2024
The old lady knows nothing but her hunger at this instant. She emerges from her home, locks the door, and begins to hobble on her rickety knees down towards the river. The forest floor squelches under her feet, oozing up gelatinous black liquid that clings to her skin and travels up her legs. When she breathes, her nose burns from the sharp fumes in the air, and she coughs in harsh, guttural gasps as she hacks up a glob of phlegm.
A fish surfaces on the river, body swollen and gills flapping as it gasps for oxygen, eyes glassy. She spies it at once, snatching it up without... Continue →
The Coral Tombs
by Eric Raglin in Issue Seventeen, September 2024
Ernesto doesn't bother learning hurricane names anymore. Sometimes the tourists mention them—Luisa's supposed to make landfall in a couple hours. We'll be safe here, right?—but they never stick in his head. Hurricanes, like tourists, are all the same: destructive forces converging on his home.
Today, they converge again: the tenth storm and tenth tour group of the season. The bay might be a mess of beach houses battered into splinters and luxury hotels flooded into ruin, but for Ernesto, business has never been better.
The Hanolds and the Fogles arrive eight hours... Continue →
Giant Killer Shark
by Timothy Mudie in Issue Seventeen, September 2024
Wouldn't you know it. You're on a charter fishing boat with your two uncles and their kids. The boat cuts through waves, bouncing you in your seat. You grip the bench, terrified of falling overboard. You didn't want to come here, but Grandpa made you. It was Uncle Brian's idea to bring you fishing as an early thirteenth birthday present; he and grandpa said it would be good for you to hang out with your cousins. You hate the ocean, hate boats, and your cousins are seventeen, eighteen, and twenty. Think they want to hang out with a twelve-year-old?
Grandpa, who you live with, isn't... Continue →
Bleeding Hearts
by Suzan Palumbo in Issue Seventeen, September 2024
"I am told you cure heartbreak," my neighbor says to me over the fence between our properties. It's the first time she's addressed me since moving into the vacant cottage next door. I don't glance up from mangling the forsythia bush with my pruning shears.
"There is no remedy for heartbreak. It diffuses into you, becomes part of your marrow. I can't excise it. Only dilute it."
"Will you do that for me?" Her voice is a breath away from cracking.
I pause and look at her. "Are you sure that's what you want?"
"Yes."
Continue →
A Good Catch
by Stacie Turner in Issue Seventeen, September 2024
The ocean hated Jacqueline Morell.
The ocean didn't usually hate people. In most cases, the ocean regarded her human guests with indifference. She could kill them without a drop of remorse, but it wasn't that she wanted them to suffer. She simply didn't care. But from the very first moment Jackie put a single toe in the water, the ocean despised her. Maybe the ocean was in a bad mood. Maybe Jackie was one small child too many that day on that beach, but when Jackie stamped her tiny foot down, the ocean recoiled. This would not do. Water slid away from the sand, the tide going out... Continue →